Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Lovely Emily. She was a great, seminal theologian! In my view anyway. We desperately need more of her kind.

OK. I’ll admit: the “Organization” we call the “Church” probably needs a few rules to be tidy. Frankly, I think we have far too many. And far too many of them are counter to what I think God wants from us. It’s a rather dubious assumption that She wanted us to organize an “Institution”. Now, here I suppose I could get in trouble ….. being an ordained priest in the Organization! However, I’m happy to agree that a LITTLE organization is probably useful so we can publically witness to the joy of the Gospel. But I’m not at all sure that organizing ourselves to look like a vestige of the Roman Empire – complete with rich Byzantine clothing, as MUCH as I love wearing them, what healthy Gay man wouldn’t! – is really likely to make us effective as agents in transforming the World into a Peaceable Kingdom. All that stuff HAS to be perifipheral.

Let’s face it: the Trinity is at best a charming icon of the busy activity of Love, as it generates, spreads, and expresses itself in the Human Community. At worst: it becomes a vicious instrument in separating human beings from each other in that Peaceable Kingdom. What a dilemma!

So, bless Saint Emily Dickinson! She reminds us, in her utterly charming Invocation, that the World is infused with the Divine Consciousness. Just pay attention to Life, she says. Cherish it; surrender to it. Remember you are a part of it. Live it, in abandonment, with whimsicality and with delight.